


nos ausi reserver

by connorswhisk



Category: DC Extended Universe, DCU (Comics), Harley Quinn (Comics), Poison Ivy (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, this is harlivy but it's also an ivy study because i love her sm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:14:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29055717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/connorswhisk/pseuds/connorswhisk
Summary: It’s surprising to Ivy, how drawing really does help her speak to other people. If she had known that, maybe she would have tried it years ago.But maybe it isn’t the drawings. Maybe it’s Quinzel. Ivy’s never felt connected to one of her doctors before, not even a little, but with Quinzel…it’s different. Ivy still doesn’t like her, because she's a doctor, and she isn’t on Ivy’s side, but…she doesn’t ask Ivy for anything. She doesn’t even really expect much from Ivy. And when Ivy talks…she listens. Even when Ivy does speak to other people, no one listens to her in the way Quinzel does.It’s almost as if, in another lifetime…they could have been friends.The concept is alien to Ivy, and it scares her, but…she sort of wants it, too.
Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 75





	nos ausi reserver

**Author's Note:**

> title is taken from words by ennius - translated from latin, it means "we dared open up"

_“Pamela.”_

_She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Woodrue, but I can’t. I just_ can’t. _”_

_The quirk of an eyebrow, a curled lip. “Sure you can,” he drawls, sweet, honey-drenched, acidic. “You’re a capable botanist, Pamela. You can do anything you put your mind to.”_

_She wets her lips, hugging her binder closer to her chest, looking anywhere but at his eyes, his gleaming silver eyes. His eyes look like dimes. Bright. Small. Sizing up their target._

_To him, her eyes must look like a cornered animal’s. Like_ prey.

_“Why me?” she asks desperately. “Why me?”_

_He chuckles, low and deep in his throat. “You’re my assistant.” A hand reaches out to slowly caress her cheek, and she flinches slightly, squeezes her eyes shut. “You’re my_ girl. _”_

_“Please,” she whispers, praying to God that someone,_ anyone, _will come and knock on the laboratory door, give her a chance to escape. “Please don’t do this to me.”_

_The hand draws back. “Oh, Pamela,” he sighs, tutting, as if he’s disappointed in her._

_“Too late.”_

_Before she even realizes what’s happening, the needle is in her neck, and the syringe is being pushed down._

_“Oh my God!” she screams, her binder falling to the floor, scrabbling frantically to pull the offending object out of her flesh, but the damage has already been dealt. “Oh my GOD, what have you DONE?”_

_He shakes his head, oblivious to her struggles, oblivious to her bleeding and her dizziness and the way her body’s listing, her perception's doubling. “Pamela, Pamela, Pamela,” he drones. “Don’t you see that I’m helping you?”_

_“No,” she mutters, her head spinning, her stomach roiling, her vision tinging a sickening green color. “No, no, no…”_

_She falls to her knees on the cold, concrete floor, in the midst of all the strewn papers of her binder, and all she can see are those gleaming eyes, those dime-eyes, staring at her,_ smiling _at her, staring, staring, smiling -_

Poison Ivy sits straight up in bed and shudders, throat dry, back slick with sweat.

She thinks, for a split-second, that she can see the eyes leering at her, even now. Then she realizes it’s just Croc in the cell across from her, doing his usual late-night prowl.

Ivy wills her heart to slow its beating (she hates how long it takes, hates the way these nightmares still plague her, stuck to her like crime sticks to Gotham), turns on her side, and goes back to sleep.

**— — —**

She wakes the next morning to the same bullshit military fanfare they always play over the speakers at seven A.M., because apparently, to the doctors at Arkham, the inmates are soldiers at war.

Fuck it, the way things can get around here? They might as well be.

“Come on, Isley, let’s go,” Officer Campbell says.

_God,_ Ivy hates Campbell, but there’s nothing really to be done about that, so she lets him escort her to the mess hall, ignores the way his finger traces up and down her shoulder like she’s some sort of fucking _pet,_ and keeps her jaw clenched, her eyes up ahead. She’d love to stop him in the middle of the hall right here and fuck him up _good,_ because even without plants she could still make him bleed, break a couple of bones if she wanted to. And she _does_ want to, but she’d really rather continue to have a cell of her own, no matter how drab. It’s either that or get locked up in the hole for a week for assaulting a police officer, and the hole is not a fun place to be.

Then again, neither is Arkham.

“Riddle me this: What’s tall, blonde, and definite fresh meat?”

Ivy groans and stabs her plastic fork into her rubbery eggs. “Fuck off, Nygma.”

Riddler ignores her (of _course_ ) and drops into the bench across from Ivy with a grin, seemingly unaware of her irritation.

“No answer?” he asks.

“What part of ‘fuck off’ do you not understand?”

“Fine. I’ll tell you then: It’s the Asylum’s newest psychologist. Innocent-looking thing, she is,” he adds, lazily spooning sugar onto his mealy porridge.

Ivy frowns, her interest piqued. “Arkham’s got a new shrink? How do you know?”

“Saw her just now,” Riddler says, wiggling his eyebrows. “She’s about your age. Seemed a little nervous about being here.”

Ivy snorts. “Tch. Who wouldn’t be? How long do you think she’ll last? The last newbie only stayed, what, four months?”

“The question you _should_ be asking,” Riddler says. “Is who is she here to _treat?_ ”

And that’s a _really_ good question. The last psychologist to try anything was Dr. Godfrey. Ivy hadn’t been one of his patients, but last she heard, he’d had a nervous breakdown, and was moving out to live with his brother in the country.

Godfrey had been older, too, a good fifty years strong. From the sound of things, this new doctor is maybe half that, probably not long out of university.

Ivy wonders if the poor woman knows what she’s getting into, then decides that she probably doesn’t.

Ivy spends her rec time alone, in a damp corner of the courtyard that the inmates are permitted to mill around for an hour every day. She usually takes this time to try and soak up a couple of meager rays of sunlight, get some sort of real food into her body, but Gotham is rarely sunny, and today is no exception.

There are no plants in the courtyard, not even a single blade of grass poking through the cobblestones. Each and every crack has been methodically filled, every weed pulled, every bit of green killed with chemical spray, to make sure that Ivy has nothing. Not even a dandelion to call her own, a rosebush to water and care for.

The truth is that she _would_ escape if she _did_ have something like that - but she’d be glad to have them for company, regardless.

So instead, she sits by herself with a sketchpad across her knee and a charcoal pencil in her hand, scratching out pictures of the plants she wishes she could see. She’s all right at drawing - been doing it ever since she was a kid, when the yelling got too much and she needed a way to distract herself. She’d never really taken it up as a hobby as she got older (aside from a few absent-minded doodles on paper napkins or in the margins of her lecture notes), but in Arkham, it’s all she has to keep herself occupied, a distraction once more.

Today she’s doing an amaryllis, with pointed petals and long, snaking filaments. She wishes she had some colored pencils, or watercolors, or _something_ to give her plants a little more life, but she’s already lucky to have what she has. She doesn’t want to push her luck.

She also wishes that she didn’t have to do her work on processed dead trees, but…

She’s just putting the finishing shading touches on the flower when the slap rings out, cutting through the relatively quiet air of the courtyard, sharp and clear.

Ivy glances up. Along the opposite wall, a struggling Victor Zsasz is being restrained by two guards, a stinging red mark rising quickly on his cheekbone. Standing a few feet away from him, hand still outstretched, is -

Tall, blonde, and maybe not so fresh as she looks. Under the watchful eyes of all of the inmates, the new psychologist slowly composes herself, draws her hand back, smooths the front of her coat down, and tucks a stray wisp of hair behind her ear.

“ _Don’t_ try touching me again,” she warns Zsasz, and Ivy thinks, _Well._ This _is new._

The doctor returns to the inside of the building, heels clacking on the cement, walking with the air of an independent who refuses to take any shit from anyone. Ivy watches her as she goes, watches the same way everyone else does, and the question from earlier crops up once more:

_Who is she here to treat?_

Ivy returns to her cell, stares at her drawings, and yearns for a while.

Lunch finds her in the same seat as always, staring down at a tray full of the same slop as always, the TV monitors on the walls blaring the same news crap as always. Ivy’d much prefer to watch something a little more engaging, a sports game at _least,_ but the news in Gotham is usually pretty eventful, and it’s better than nothing.

“I know something you don’t know,” the familiar voice sings.

Ivy grits her teeth. She isn’t friends with Edward Nygma - far from it - but he seems intent on sitting with her for almost every mealtime, regardless.

Riddler’s eyebrows dance. “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“If you make me answer a riddle,” Ivy warns. “I’ll punch your teeth in.”

He pouts. “You’re no fun. I had a really good one ready and everything!”

Ivy rolls her eyes.“Are you going to tell me what you’ve found out, or not?”

Riddler starts to say something, and then cuts off, looking over at the TV. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Ivy follows his gaze. The headline blares: BREAKING - DISTRICT ATTORNEY HARVEY DENT SCARRED BY ACID ATTACK

“Around twenty minutes ago, Gotham DA Harvey Dent was attacked in court by infamous mob boss Salvatore Maroni,” the anchorwoman is saying. “According to multiple sources, after Dent charged Maroni with multiple accounts of murder of the second degree, Maroni threw acid that he had concealed in a coffee cup into Dent’s face. We have here a video from one of the bystanders. Please be warned: the video is graphic, and may be disturbing to some viewers.”

The woman disappears, to be replaced with shaky cellphone footage of the inside of the court. Dent says something, Maroni shouts something back, and before Ivy can start to wonder what either of them had said, Maroni lashes out, quick, and throws a yellowish liquid into Dent’s face.

Dent screams, and staggers backward. There’s a lot of yelling and movement; the camera slips downward, and by the time it’s lifted back up again, the view of Dent is clear: the entire left side of his face has turned a bright and angry red, the skin seeming to bubble and melt; his flesh steams, and the left sleeve of his suit begins to eat away completely.

The other inmates jeer. “Ha! Serves the fucker right!” and “Should’ve gone for the whole face, not just half!”

“Jesus,” Ivy remarks, feeling slightly sick to her stomach. “That’s gonna be a lot of plastic surgery.”

Riddler claps his hands together, seemingly with glee. “Oh, how _awful._ But anyways,” he intones, as if a member of the government didn’t just have his face permanently destroyed on television for them all to see. “As I was saying.”

Ivy tears her eyes away from the screen. “Right,” she says. “What’d you find out?”

“The new doctor’s named Harleen Quinzel,” he tells her. “She’s a recent graduate of Gotham University, top of her class, and here, it seems, to experience things _up close_ and _personal._ ”

“That’s all you got?” Ivy asks, unimpressed. “Aren’t your contacts usually better than that?”

Riddler huffs, waving his hand. “Well, _yes,_ I was _getting_ to that, Isley,” he says. “Quinzel is here to study all of us, but there seems to be one person in particular that she’s set her sights on.” He grins. “In fact, she wrote her thesis paper on him.”

Ivy’s fairly sure she already knows the answer, but she asks anyway, a coldly apprehensive feeling sinking into the pit of her gut. “Who is it?”

Nygma grins widely. “He lives for laughter, he lives for the crowd. Without them, he’s nothing. Who do you think?”

**— — —**

_The woman sitting at the table is familiar; in fact, she looks a lot like Ivy, just older, and with a few minor differences: a shorter nose, a broader forehead, smaller feet, and spindlier fingers. But most other things - the red hair, the bright green eyes, the angular face - are the same._

_“Why are you crying, Mommy?” the little girl asks. It’s Christmas, and no one should be crying on Christmas. The presents have been opened, the dinner consumed, the carols on the radio played, and the woman is sitting at the dining room table, tears streaming down her face._

_She quickly dries her eyes, sniffles, and musters a weak smile. “I’m not crying, Acorn. I’m just…I’m just tired, that’s all.”_

_The little girl frowns. “You cry when you’re tired?”_

_The woman doesn’t meet her eyes. “Sometimes,” she says._

_The little girl hesitates. “I drew a picture with the new crayons you got me…”_

_“Oh, yeah?” The woman smiles, straightening herself up. “Let’s see it.”_

_The little girl shyly hands over the paper. “That’s you,” she says, pointing at a stick figure with a purple dress and red hair. “And there’s me.” Another red-headed figure, dressed in green. “And Daddy.” A darker figure, wearing black. “And the Christmas tree, and Frank.”_

_“Who’s Frank?”_

_“Frank is the name of the Venus flytrap that Santa brought me,” the little girl says with pride, grinning and showing off the gap between her two front teeth. “He’s my best friend.”_

_  
The woman nods. The smile on her face looks distracted. “I see.”_

_The little girl takes the drawing back. “I’m gonna go show it to Daddy,” she says happily._

_The woman’s eyes light up with alarm. “Oh, Acorn, don’t bother your father while he’s busy - “_

_It’s no use. The little girl is already gone, deaf to her mother’s warnings, skipping joyfully up the stairs and humming “Frosty the Snowman” loudly. Her father’s office is at the end of the plushly-carpeted hall, and the door is ajar, so she shouldn’t have to knock._

_Inside, a man sits behind a desk, his head in his hands, a half-empty bottle of scotch and a glass laid out in front of him. He looks dejected. Drunk. Depressed. If the little girl were a bit older, she’d know better than to try and win his attention now._

_But she isn’t, and she doesn’t. Instead, she steps up to the desk and says, “Daddy?”_

_The man looks up at her. His dark hair is disheveled, his buttons undone. He hasn’t been crying, not like the woman, but he has been drinking. Heavily._

_“What do you want?” he hurls at her._

_The little girl falters. “I…I just wanted to show you the picture I drew.”_

_He raises his eyebrows, and she gives it to him._

_“It’s the whole family,” she states, smiling a little. “There’s me, and you, and Mommy, and Frank, and the Christmas tree - “_

_“Who the hell is Frank?”_

_“Frank’s my Venus flytrap,” she tells him._

_The man’s jaw clenches. “You_ named _the fucking thing?”_

_The little girl swallows. “Well - Well, yeah. I thought he needed one.”_

_The man’s eyes darken, and his fists clench, wrinkling the paper he’s holding._

_  
“Daddy!” the little girl shrieks. “Be careful, you’re ruining it!”_

_He stops. And then, without breaking eye contact with his daughter, swiftly and cleanly tears the drawing in two._

_“NO!” the little girl yells, tears filling her eyes. “Daddy!”_

_She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand why he did it. It was just a picture. It was justa picture of a family, her family,_ his _family, on Christmas._

_The man leers. “Grow up, Pamela,” he slurs. “Jus’ grow up.”_

_“Everett, that’s_ enough. _”_

_The man turns unsteadily to the woman. “You aren’t part of this,_ bitch.”

_The woman’s nostrils flare. “I am part of this family,” she says. “And you don’t speak like that to my daughter.”_

_The man reaches for his belt._

_The little girl runs to her bedroom, locks the door, does her best to block out the sounds of shouting and leather and metal against skin, and draws a picture of a sunflower._

Ivy wakes up again, less sudden, less jolting. She stares at the ceiling for what feels like hours, and somewhere along the line, she falls back asleep.

**— — —**

Today, her drawing time is interrupted once more, but not by a slap.

“Isley,” Campbell says. “You have a session with Dr. Quinzel in an hour.”

Ivy looks up from her spear thistle sketch. “And if I don’t want to meet with her?”

Campbell sneers. “That isn’t really your decision.” He drops his voice. “Your hair looks sexy today.”

Ivy grits her teeth and ignores him. “If you don’t mind, I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart.”

He leaves.

If the spear thistle on the page of the sketchbook were real, Ivy would use it to cut his throat.

When the time comes, she feels jittery. Not because she’s nervous, but because she’s apprehensive. The last psychologist Ivy had…well, let’s just say that Ivy doesn’t like opening up to people, and Dr. Brennan had pried _way_ too much.

Campbell brings her into Quinzel’s office, cuffs her to the chair, and leaves to stand outside the door. The only reason he hadn’t tried anything else on her is because someone ( _a woman_ ) is there to see it if he had.

Ivy stares straight ahead of her, right at Quinzel’s face, and says,

“Listen, I don’t need your therapy, and I don’t need your fucking _pity,_ either.”

Quinzel doesn’t even blink. She says, “I’m not a therapist, and I can’t say I pity you.”

And to that, Ivy says -

Nothing. Just slumps back in her chair and looks at the floor.

“Dr. Pamela Isley,” Quinzel says slowly. “Botanist. How fitting.”

Ivy shrugs.

“Says here that you were the assistant to one Dr. Jason Woodrue,” Quinzel continues, and Ivy’s hands grip the arms of her chair tightly. “Until his unfortunate death, of course.”

“It wasn’t _unfortunate,_ ” Ivy spits out. “It was what he _deserved._ ”

Quinzel looks at her over the top of her mug of coffee. “Do you think everyone deserves what they get?”

Ivy shrugs again. “I don’t know. But people get what they deserve.”

“Do you think that applies to Harvey Dent?” Quinzel asks quietly.

Ivy swallows. “Look,” she says. “I don’t know the guy personally, but I _do_ know that he put a lot of people in prison through some really backhanded methods. I don’t know if he deserved to get it from Maroni, but he might have deserved it from _someone._ I can’t say. Most of the people here certainly think so,” she adds, remembering the other inmates’ reactions to Dent’s accident.

“So enlighten me,” Quinzel says plainly, steepling her fingers in front of her. “Why did Jason Woodrue deserve to be disemboweled by vines?”

“You _know_ why,” Ivy hisses, glaring.

“Ms. Isley, the reason I’m here is to talk to the patients, get to the roots of their issues, and see if I can’t help resolve a couple of them.” She holds up a hand as Ivy tries to speak. “I’m _not_ expecting you to tell me everything. But I’d like to know _some_ things.”

Ivy huffs. “What do you want to know? That I’m a misanthrope and I hate people? That I’m more comfortable with plants than I am with human beings? That I’ve never really had a friend my whole life long?”

Quinzel pauses. “Ms. Isley, have all of your psychologists prior to me been men?”

Ivy looks away. “Yes.” She’d realized as soon as Campbell had approached her in the yard earlier that morning that Quinzel would be her first woman doctor. She knows it probably means something, that it might be easier this way…

…But woman or not, she’s still a shrink. “I don’t think you’ll be much different from them, though.”

Quinzel shrugs. “Maybe not. But I’d like to try. And trust me, Ms. Isley.” A shadow flickers over her face, just for a brief second, so quick that Ivy wonders if she’d imagined it. “I know all too well how terrible men can be.”

And Ivy wonders. Quinzel looks like a real straight-A kind of girl, the kind of hard-working student that professors love to dote on and that everyone else in the class despises. She wonders what could have happened to Quinzel to make her feel like she knows what Ivy’s talking about.

But Ivy was once almost exactly like Quinzel. And wicked men, the really twisted ones, will prey on any kind of woman.

Ivy sighs. “I’m not saying I’m agreeing to this, or even that I think you’re different from the others. But…sometimes I have a difficult time putting things into words when I’m talking about… _something like this._ So…I don’t know what to tell you,” she finishes lamely, looking up warily at the other woman.

Quinzel doesn’t miss a beat. “Your file says that you like to draw. You could always try art therapy. Sketch something for me, a person, a place, an object, an abstract cluster of shapes, anything, and then use it to help you say what you need to say. Does that sound like something you might want to try?”

Ivy thinks about it. She _hates_ opening up to people.

But it’s also something that she thinks she might _need_ to do. If only to dispel the nightmares she’s been having, give her one good night of uninterrupted sleep for once.

“I think,” she says slowly, not looking Quinzel in the eye. “That that could be worth a shot.”

Quinzel smiles. “Great.” She checks her watch. “We still have forty-five minutes left. Would you like to draw something now?”

And Ivy, against her better judgement, says, “Yeah. Ok.”

Quinzel reaches into her cabinet, pulls out a couple of sheets of printer paper and a pencil and pushes them over to Ivy.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she says.

Ivy raises her eyebrows and rattles her cuffs. “My hands are tied. Literally.”

“Oh!” For the first time, Quinzel’s outer shell breaks, and the performance crumbles. She looks embarrassed. “Right. Sorry.”

As Quinzel calls for the guard, a small part of Ivy’s brain thinks that she likes the real Quinzel better.

Not that it matters. Arkham staff is Arkham staff, and Ivy hates them all.

“You sure, doc?” Campbell asks incredulously. “She’s a dangerous chick, this one.”

“So is everyone else in the Asylum,” Quinzel replies. “And I don’t see any plants around here, do you?”

Campbell grumbles something, but unlocks Ivy’s cuffs and leaves.

“You _aren’t_ going to try anything, are you?” Quinzel asks. “I don’t want to have to call him back in here.”

Ivy shakes her head. “No plants. Not really worth a shot.” She pauses, raises her eyebrows. “Are you afraid, Dr. Quinzel?”

Quinzel hesitates.

Ivy closes her tired eyes. “You don’t need to be.”

Quinzel nods. “Right. Well. I guess we start from the beginning. Would you mind showing me what your childhood was like?”

Ivy stares down at the paper for a moment, thinking. Then she picks up the pencil and starts to draw.

Lighter strokes and fainter lines in one spot, harder presses and darker shades in another. Ivy draws the scene she’d dreamt about, the man ripping the little girl’s drawing, the woman standing in the doorway to his study, furious. She thinks, at first, that it might take her a while, that the pencil will be stubborn, and her mind will close off. Instead, she finds it all to flow out of her surprisingly easily, spilling out onto the page without much issue, like it was waiting to burst through, antsy and impatient. Within twenty minutes, the drawing is done.

“Finished,” Ivy announces quietly. Quinzel glances over from where she’s typing something on her work tablet - she hadn’t watched Ivy draw, and Ivy is privately very grateful for that.

“Ok,” Quinzel says, peering down at the picture, then back up at Ivy. “You can start when you feel ready to.”

Ivy swallows, opens her mouth, and talks.

“My family was very wealthy. My father was the heir to a major Gotham shipping company. His corporation was corrupt - lots of money moved around, lots of employees paid to keep quiet. He’d dump garbage into the Gotham River, fire two or three people, and then come home and have a glass of scotch. Half the time, he didn’t even notice me and my mother. The other half…we were less fortunate.”

Ivy takes a deep breath, unable to meet Quinzel’s eyes. Quinzel, to her credit, doesn’t say anything.

It’s strange. Fifteen minutes before, Ivy wouldn’t have been this honest. Not a chance. But the drawing - the drawing _helped,_ whether she likes it or not.

She plunges forward.

“He never beat me, because my mother wouldn’t let him. But she got the worst of it. I can’t tell you how many nights I spent shut in my room with my fingers in my ears, trying to will away the sounds of screaming and hitting. They would fight about everything - the dinner, the house, money, _me_ \- but nothing ever changed. He still went to work, she still stayed home, and I still had no friends.

“I never had friends. I just…found it hard to talk to other children my age. Every now and then, a kid would try to get to know me, but…they never stuck around for that long. I was a difficult person. Still am.

“I had the plants, though. We had a whole greenhouse full of them at the mansion. My father never cared for them, but my mother took it upon herself to water them daily personally, and she taught me everything she knew. When I was eight, _Santa Claus_ brought me a Venus flytrap. I named him Frank. It probably sounds pathetic, but he was my only friend.”

“It doesn’t sound pathetic,” Quinzel says quietly.

Ivy locks eyes with her, just for a second, and presses on.

“My father didn’t like how attracted I was to botany. He wanted me to find a successful man to marry, so my husband could take over the company in my father’s place. Dad didn’t believe a woman could run a business, you see. When I told him I wanted to work with Dr. Woodrue, he said he wouldn’t pay for the tuition. But it didn’t matter. I won a grant and went to Gotham University on a full scholarship.

“Mom died in my sophomore year, and I killed my father in my senior. I got my cut of the will, and let the company rot. We must have been at school together for at least a couple of semesters, right?” she adds, the thought only just occurring to her.

“Two years,” Quinzel supplies. “But we never met.”

“No,” Ivy says. “We didn’t. And you probably wouldn’t have liked me if we did.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Quinzel murmurs, fixing Ivy with an inscrutable expression.

Ivy just stares.

Quinzel clears her throat. “So, you killed your father,” she says. “And how did it make you feel?”

“I - “

An alarm on Quinzel’s phone rings. She blinks, and then shuts it off.

“Time’s up,” she says, and Ivy feels relieved and strangely disappointed at the same time.

“When do I have you next?” Ivy asks.

Quinzel consults her desk calendar. “Wednesday. Same time.” She looks up at Ivy. “We’ll continue our conversation then. Have a good lunch, Ms. Isley.”

“I will,” Ivy says. “If the news is talking about anything other than Harvey Dent, that is.”

Quinzel blows a quick breath of air out of her nose. “You know, the criminals he locked up used to call him - “

“Two-Face.” Ivy grins wryly. “I know.”

Quinzel nods. “It isn’t funny,” she says, but Ivy thinks she sees a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth, anyway.

“Dr. Quinzel,” Ivy says suddenly, as Campbell places the cuffs back on her. “I never answered your question. From before.”

“Yes?” Quinzel asks, curiosity alight in her eyes.

“I felt _alive,_ ” Ivy tells her.

**— — —**

_“It’ll be revolutionary, Pamela,” he tells her, dime-eyes flashing. “I’ll sell it to the military and make_ millions.”

_“I’ll get a cut of those millions, won’t I, Dr. Woodrue?” Pamela asks, only half-way joking. She can’t be sure if he’s really forgotten or not, that this is_ her _serum, too, not just his._

_His face twitches, but he says, “Yes. Of course.”_

_Pamela decides to change the subject. “With that much money, you’d be able to retire,” she says, measuring out a solution in a test tube. “Settle down? Find another wife?”_

_“I don’t need to find one,” Dr. Woodrue says lightly, passing by Pamela on his way to sharpen his pencil and squeezing her shoulder. “I’ve got you right here, haven’t I?”_

_Pamela laughs, but it feels forced. “Of course. If your kind of woman is a misanthrope with an apartment full of plants, then you’re in luck.”_

_They’ve always joked about it. Pamela being his work-wife. And usually, it_ feels _like a joke, too. She’s only twenty-three years old, still a kid, really. He’s older, forty-one and divorced, and her mentor. A relationship between them would be out of the question. Completely inappropriate. And totally implausible - Pamela doesn’t even like men like that. So it’s only a joke, a running gag they keep up between the two of them, as coworkers, as colleagues, as friends._

_But lately…lately, those jokes are becoming less and less amusing._

_At the end of the day, Pamela packs up the lab equipment, stuffs all of her disorganized sheafs of notes and scratch paper into her bag, and powers down her computer. She’s almost at the door when Dr. Woodrue steps in front of her._

_“Oh!” She jumps, then laughs nervously. “Sorry, you startled me.”_

_“It’s quite all right,” Dr. Woodrue says smoothly. “Do you already have dinner plans?”_

_Pamela hesitates. “Dinner plans?”_

_He isn’t asking what she_ thinks _he’s asking…_

_Is he?_

_“Dinner plans,” Dr. Woodrue echoes. “Because if you don’t, I was wondering if you wouldn’t like to come back to my place.” He leans in closer, slightly, and Pamela is overwhelmed by the scent of his cologne. “Have a drink.”_

_Pamela feels her throat constrict. “Dr. Woodrue…I…”_

_“Go on, Pam,” he coaxes, eyes flashing. “I know you want it._ You _know you want it. Say you’ll come home with me. Say you’ll have a drink.”_

_Pamela, miraculously, finds her voice again. “I - I’d love to, Dr. Woodrue, but I promised I’d call my mother tonight.” She swallows. “She likes to have long phone conversations. She’ll want to hear how my work is going.”_

_The dime-eyes go dull. Dr. Woodrue leans back again, and the professional manner returns, almost as if it had never left. “Of course. It’s good of you, to keep in touch with your mother. I wish I’d done that more while mine was still alive.”_

_Pamela nods. “Yes.”_

_She doesn’t tell him that her mother died of a stroke the year previous. She doesn’t tell him that she never calls_ anyone _on the phone, except for the Thai takeout place down the street. She doesn’t tell him that she’s not sure what excuse she’ll have ready next time he asks her this same exact question._

_And he_ will _ask again._

_“Have a nice evening, Dr. Woodrue,” she mutters, pushing past him._

_He grabs her wrist. Not hard enough for it to hurt, but hard enough for it to mean something._

_“Pamela,” he says, voice lilting. “Dream of me tonight.”_

_Pamela’s stomach erupts with terror._

_“I’ll try, Dr. Woodrue. I’ll try.”_

**— — —**

Two weeks later, and Ivy is trying to prepare herself to sketch the scene for Quinzel. She’s kept up a steady stream of drawings over their past three sessions, and the folder Quinzel keeps on her is slowly filling up.

It’s surprising to Ivy, how drawing really does help her speak to other people. If she had known that, maybe she would have tried it years ago.

But maybe it isn’t the drawings. Maybe it’s _Quinzel._ Ivy’s never felt connected to one of her doctors before, not even a little, but with Quinzel…it’s different. Ivy still doesn’t like her, because she _is_ a doctor, and she _isn’t_ on Ivy’s side, but…she doesn’t _ask_ Ivy for anything. She doesn’t even really _expect_ much from Ivy. And when Ivy talks…she listens. Even when Ivy _does_ speak to other people, no one listens to her in the way Quinzel does.

It’s almost as if, in another lifetime…they could have been _friends._

The concept is alien to Ivy, and it scares her, but…she sort of _wants_ it, too.

Campbell is groping her waist again. Ivy tries to surreptitiously shake him off of her, but he just goes right back to doing it like nothing even happened.

She should just ignore it like usual until she gets to Quinzel’s office. But today, she doesn’t. She doesn’t know what makes her do it (maybe it’s the fact that it's a clear and sunny day, maybe it’s the fact that, while she did have a small nightmare last night, she didn’t wake up at three AM like usual), but she stops walking, and Campbell stops, too, hand still splayed on her waist.

He shakes her. “Come on. Move.”

“No,” Ivy says, scowling. “Not until you get your hand off me.”

Campbell smirks. “You and I both know that that ain’t gonna happen, sweetheart.”

“ _Shut your fucking face,_ ” Ivy hisses. “Stop touching me. _Now._ ”

He rolls his eyes and tries to pull her forward again. “Move it, Isley. Or else my _hand_ is gonna end up someplace _else._ ”

Ivy stands her ground.

“Come _on,_ you bitch,” Campbell growls, and his hand starts to move up, up, up -

“Get _off_ me, you fucking bastard!” Ivy shouts, wrenching herself free of his grasp, and before he can do anything else, Quinzel throws open her office door.

“Ah! Ms. Isley!” Her smile is too big, her friendly tone too fake. “I’ve been waiting for you. Is there an issue, Officer Campbell?”

“No, ma’am,” Campbell mutters. “No issue.”

Quinzel nods. “That’s great to hear.”

Campbell cuffs Ivy to the chair and leaves.

When Quinzel turns back around from closing the door, the smile slips off her face to be replaced with an expression that is a little disheartening in its hostility. _Unnerving,_ even.

“Are you ok?” she asks, coming close, _way_ too close to Ivy. “Did he hurt you?”

Ivy leans away. “Don’t touch me!”

Quinzel falters, then steps back, looking mortified. “I’m sorry.”

Ivy exhales. “It’s fine. I’m fine. He…He does that a lot.”

Quinzel frowns. “I’m assuming that Dr. Strange and the rest of staff would refuse to do anything about it, even _if_ you told them?”

Ivy laughs humorlessly. “You assume correctly.”

Quinzel still has a glint of that frightening hostility in her eye, but she takes her seat and clears her throat. “Well. Was there anything in particular that you wanted to discuss today?”

Ivy swallows, and her throat feels like sandpaper. “I - Well, I thought maybe - Dr. Woodrue…”

But she can’t form the rest of the words.

“I had an idea, actually,” Quinzel suggests lightly. “If you’re open to it.”

Ivy nods gratefully.

Quinzel pushes the paper and pencil forward. “Draw me Batman.”

Ivy blinks. “What?”

“Draw me Batman,” Quinzel repeats. “No one in here likes him all that much - and you’re an angry person. It might be a good outlet.”

Truthfully, Ivy doesn’t think much about Batman unless she’s fighting him, but she’s so thankful for the subject change from Woodrue that she complies.

She’s used to this. She’s drawn this face, this body, the cape, the ears, the symbol a dozen times. The lines come easy to her, the shading quick. She’s finished within five minutes.

Quinzel raises her eyebrows, holding the paper up. “That…was fast.”

“I draw him a lot,” Ivy says quietly. “The other inmates ask me, sometimes. For target practice.”

Quinzel nods. “I understand. I - I haven’t seen any of these drawings in the Joker’s cell.”

“That’s because I don’t talk to the Joker,” Ivy responds, raising her eyebrows.

“Right,” Quinzel says, and coughs. “Of course.” She sets the drawing back down on the desk. “Tell me how Batman makes you feel.”

“How he makes me _feel?_ ” Ivy scoffs. “I don’t exactly invite him over for Sunday dinner at my apartment.”

Quinzel says nothing, just waits for her to continue.

Ivy sighs. “I think - I don’t think he’s a bad _person,_ per se, he just…he doesn’t see things the same way I do. He doesn’t see _life_ the same way _we_ do. He isn’t a metahuman. He doesn’t have a reptilian skin condition. He doesn’t speak to white rabbits, or have a dying wife with a rare disease, and he didn’t get his skin chemically bleached. He…he’s _normal._ As far as I can tell, the only really tragic thing he’s ever experienced was when the Joker killed Robin.”

“But you don’t know that,” Quinzel supplies. “You’re guessing.”

Ivy shrugs. “Sure, but…I mean, he has no grasp of how _important_ the environment is, for one thing. For another, this entire city and all of its officials are totally and completely _up his ass._ I mean, he’s _inescapable._ Even in here, all anyone wants to talk about is _Batman,_ and how he’s the reason we’re all stuck in this shithole.”

Quinzel snorts.

“Is that funny?” Ivy asks.

“No, it’s just - “ Quinzel laughs. “ _Shithole_ is definitely the right term.”

“Let me ask you something; do _you_ like Batman, Dr. Quinzel?”

Quinzel stops laughing. She pauses. Straightens up. Adjusts her glasses.

“Well,” she says. “Well…”

“You can be honest with me,” Ivy tells her. “It’s not like I’m going to spill to anyone.”

“I think,” Quinzel starts to say, and then stops. Starts to look a little _angry._ “I _know_ that Batman doesn’t believe that any of you can change. I’ve spoken to him firsthand about it. I’ve asked him if he thinks it’s possible. And he said he _hopes_ so, but - “ She shakes her head. “I think that’s _bullshit,_ if you’ll excuse me. He thinks you’re all too far gone. He thinks you’re _beyond help,_ all of you, just like the rest of this godforsaken city. And sometimes I wonder…I wonder if he cares for all the people of Gotham as much as Jim Gordon would have us believe.”

“Damn,” Ivy says into the silence that follows. “Tell me how you really feel.”

Quinzel seems to snap out of it. “I’m _your_ psychologist, not the other way around.”

“Sure, sure,” Ivy says. “But what if he’s right? What if we _are_ all just a bunch of lost causes?”

Quinzel shakes her head. “But what if you aren’t?”

“But what if we are?”

“But what if you _aren’t?_ ”

Ivy drops it. “Time’s almost up.”

Quinzel nods. “Right. Right. Before you go - “ She opens a drawer, and pulls something out of it, holds it in the palm of her hand. “This is for you.”

Ivy stares at the sunflower seed. “Are you sure you want to give me that?”

“I’ve read your file,” Quinzel says. “I know you won’t be able to do enough with that to break out of here. But I _do_ know that you could use it for a little company. Or,” Her lips twitch. “As a weapon.”

Ivy looks up at her. “Why are you doing this for me? You could get fired.”

Quinzel shrugs. “I know that you’re lonely without any plants. And I also know that Officer Campbell needs to be taught a lesson.” She holds the seed up. “You’ll take care of this, won’t you, Ms. Isley?”

Ivy feels something shift in the pit of her stomach. “Yes. I will. And you can - you can call me Ivy. If you want.”

Quinzel smiles. “I’d like that, Ivy.”

The shifting thing swoops. “Ok,” Ivy says. “…Harleen?”

“Harley,” Quinzel says, still grinning. “You can call me Harley.”

“Ok, Harley.” And Ivy smiles back, just a little.

Harley pushes the seed past Ivy’s lips (the shifting, swooping thing in the pit of Ivy’s stomach lurches again), and waves at her as she leaves with Officer Campbell. And Ivy, for the first time in a _long_ time, feels _heard._

“How’d you do in there, dollface?” Campbell croons, once they reach Ivy’s cell.

Ivy says nothing. Her tongue circles the seed inside her mouth.

Campbell smirks. “Sure, sure, play the quiet game…” He casts a glance around, peering down the hall at the guards, who are engrossed in conversation and not looking their way. He turns back to Ivy. “How about a kiss, yeah? They can’t _all_ kill, can they?”

_I wouldn’t push your luck,_ Ivy thinks, but Campbell leans in, and she can feel his hot breath on her face, and Campbell’s eyes are dark, they don’t flash, but still, Ivy swears she sees them glitter like _dimes -_

“Come here,” he says silkily, and Ivy opens her mouth and _moves._

The seed unfurls itself, the vines shoot out, and Campbell slams into the wall, _hard._ Ivy spits the seed into her hand and says, “Do _not._ Try that again.”

The other inmates in their cells jeer and hiss. Campbell whimpers, a drop of blood trickling down from his temple.

By the time the other guards have rushed over to see what all the commotion is about, the vines have retracted, and the sunflower seed is safely tucked inside Ivy’s shoe.

“Officer Campbell, are you all right?” Pitt asks as Van Camp and O’Brien hold Ivy back.

“Oh,” Ivy says, smiling. “He’s just _fine._ ”

Campbell says nothing. He only nods.

Ivy keeps the seed in a dark corner of her cell and slowly lets it germinate in secret. It really _isn’t_ enough to help her escape - but it gives her some company, at least.

When she waters it, Ivy thinks of women with blonde hair and glasses, and she smiles.

She’s still thinking about the seed at dinner when Riddler asks, “How’s therapy going for you?”

Ivy snorts. “Doctor-patient confidentiality not a thing in your book?”

“Of course not,” he says joyfully. “Is it to you?”

Ivy shrugs. “It’s not that bad.”

Riddler raises an eyebrow. “Interacting with another human being, _not that bad?_ You must really like Quinzel, to say that.”

Strangely, Ivy feels heat rise to her face. “Stuff it. How’s _your_ therapy?”

“She keeps a tally of how many riddles I give her per session,” Nygma says dryly.

Ivy bites back a laugh. “She’s better than most.”

“Sure.” Nygma grins. “But you may have competition, Ivy - seems like the clown’s got his sights set on her, too.”

“How can you be sure?” Ivy demands, throat suddenly feeling very tight.

“Just a hunch,” the Riddler says. “Or maybe I heard Bronson saying so.”

Ivy doesn’t know why that makes her feel anxious.

**— — —**

_“Jesus, Isley, do you buy your clothes from the dumpster behind the library?”_

_Pamela feels her face burn as Kelsey Hawthorne and her giggling band of rich bitch blondes pass by, smirking and pointing at her huge-framed glasses, her long skirt, her puffy shirt. Normally, she wouldn’t have to worry about an interaction like this - at school, they all wear their uniforms, and no one pokes fun at her clothing then. But this is the mall, and Pamela tries not to be seen when she’s out in public for this exact reason._

_She fires back no witty retort, simply looks at the floor and prays that they’ll just leave her alone._

_As if she could be so lucky._

_“Oh, no response?” Kelsey asks, voice dripping with false sympathy. “You seemed to have plenty to say to the plants in the greenhouse yesterday.”_

_Pamela freezes._

_“That’s right,” Kelsey continues, smile growing wider. “Jessica heard you in there, when you were all alone. Are you seriously so_ pathetically lonely _that you’ll turn to_ bushes _for friendship? I mean that - “ She laughs, short and sharp and cutting. “That’s just_ sad.”

_“No,” Pamela mutters. “No, it wasn’t like that, it was a joke, I - I was just messing around.”_

_Kelsey hums. “Because you don’t have any_ real _friends to mess around with?”_

_Pamela does her best to try and block out the sounds of their laughter, but it’s all around her, biting at her skin and echoing inside her ears and bouncing off her head, and they’re right, she’ll never have friends, she_ has _no friends, because she’s a freak, and she’ll always be -_

_“Hey! Don’t you all have some fake tan you could be applying right about now?”_

_Pamela glances up. Her savior is a girl with dark skin and a leather jacket, piercings all over her face and big, black, buckled boots on her feet, and Pamela watches as she gets closer, the plastic tag pinned to her shirt glinting in the light of the fluorescents - her name is Kyra, and Pamela owes her a_ tremendous _debt._

_Kelsey curls her lip. “Don’t you have a metal detector to be setting off?”_

_Kyra just raises an eyebrow, and Kelsey rolls her eyes and says, “Whatever. Let’s go.”_

_Pamela watches them leave and feels her heart pound._

_“You ok?” Kyra asks, turning to Pamela._

_Pamela swallows. “I - I’m fine. Thanks.”_

_“No problem. People like that - “ She scowls. “They get on my fucking nerves.”_

_“Right,” Pamela says, nodding. “Well, thanks again. I should - “_

_“What’s your name?” Kyra asks, softly, and Pamela forgets what she was going to say._

_“What? Oh, I’m Pamela. Isley.” She thrusts a hand out and cringes internally when Kyra doesn’t immediately take it._

_But then she does take it, and her palm is soft and warm, her shake firm, and she says, “I’m Kyra Lawson.” She gestures to her name tag. “But you probably already figured that out.”_

_“Yeah,” Pamela says. “Nice to meet you.”_

_“Likewise. Do you go to Beechwood Prep? I see you around sometimes, but I don’t think we go to the same school.”_

_Pamela nods. “Yeah, I go to Beechwood. You’re at Monroe?”_

_“Yep,” Kyra says, popping the p. “And trust me, there are plenty of rude bitches there, too.”_

_“I don’t doubt it.”_

_Kyra smiles, and Pamela smiles back, breath stuttering. A part of her, an intrusive, sudden part, wonders if this could be someone to talk to._

_But then Kyra looks down at her wristwatch, groans, and says, “I gotta get back to work. The clothes aren’t gonna sell themselves.”_

_“Oh, yeah.” Pamela tries not to make the disappointment evident in her voice._

_“I’ll see you around though, yeah?” Kyra asks. “I’m here most days. My boyfriend, Garrett, works over at the smoothie shop.”_

_“Yeah, I’ll…I’ll see you around, Kyra,” Pamela says, even though her heart sinks down to the floor when she hears the word “boyfriend.” “Thank you again.”_

_“No problem.”_

_And then Pamela leaves. And she doesn’t talk to Kyra again. She_ sees _her, sure, but she makes sure to steer clear of the clothing store she works at. She even goes so far as to make sure not to buy any smoothies, despite the fact that she has no idea who Garrett is, or what he looks like. Pamela knows that, if she made the effort, Kyra would probably keep talking to her. Maybe they would become good friends. Best friends, even. Pamela’s never had one of those (not unless you count Frank)._

_But…but she’s too afraid to try. Too scared she’ll say the wrong thing and screw everything up. And so she doesn’t hang out with Kyra, no matter how much she may want to._

_It’s because Kelsey had been right: Pamela is a pathetic, friendless_ loser.

_At least she has her plants._

_At least._

**— — —**

Harvey Dent’s on TV again at breakfast. One half of his face is all wrapped up in bandages, and the half that isn’t looks sort of out of it, barely there, flickering off and on.

To be fair, probably _anyone_ would act that way after something like what happened to Dent.

“Think he’s wacked out on painkillers?” Ivy asks Nygma, but Nygma isn’t listening, too busy arranging his watery baked beans into the shape of a question mark.

“Hm? Oh, Dent? Probably, probably,” Riddler mutters, staring down at his plate and stroking his chin thoughtfully.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Trying to think of a good riddle about beans,” he answers. “What rhymes with ‘legume?’”

“Mushroom,” Ivy says. “And do you really think you’re _ever_ going to find yourself in a situation where you’ll need to actually _use_ this riddle?”

“You never know,” the Riddler tells her. “Someday, I may be threatening to lower Batman into a vat of something hot and juicy, and I’d look pretty fucking stupid if I didn’t have a brain-teaser to go with that.”

Ivy raises an eyebrow. “You’re planning on boiling Batman alive in a tureen of baked beans?” she asks dryly.

Riddler snaps his finger. “‘Tureen’ and ‘bean’ rhyme!”

Ivy shakes her head and turns her eyes back to the television screen, just in time to see Dent rip off his bandages and reveal the damage that Sal Maroni’s acid had done to him.

Angry red flesh and stretched-out skin. A popping yellow eyeball and a gaping maw of a mouth. A ruined mandible and a shock of bone-white hair. And the unhinged look in his eye, the anger, the fear, the pure _hatred._

Ivy’s stomach turns just looking at it.

“Janus,” Riddler says.

“Huh?”

“Janus,” he repeats. “Roman god of doorways and choices. He’s depicted as having double the usual amount of faces. That’s what they _should_ call Dent when he falls, but,” He sighs. “I suppose _Two-Face_ is already a little too perfect.”

“‘When he falls?’” Ivy frowns. “You think he’s gonna go bad?”

“With a face like that, who wouldn’t?”

“How can you be sure?” she asks, but it isn’t _that_ big of a shock to her, not really.

“I’ve been around so long,” Riddler remarks. “At this point, I think I can just tell.”

A golden past. A promising future. A life-changing event, stealing it all cruelly away. A motive. The need for _revenge._

It’s all there. Every single box has been checked. Ivy’s all too familiar with the way this goes.

“Yeah,” she says. “I think I can, too.”

And she means it.

Rec time goes _terribly._

It isn’t usually all that bad - It isn’t _great,_ either, but it isn’t _bad._ Ivy doesn’t talk to anyone, just sits on her usual bench and draws, tries her best to soak up some of the meager sunlight.

But today is another one of those days where there _is_ no sunlight, none to be seen poking through the clouds. Instead it’s grey, and drizzly, and _dull._

When it really pours, the inmates are allowed to go inside to the activities room, where there’s a grainy TV set and battered boxes of board games, and Ivy _always_ loses at Uno to Clayface (he tends to hit her with a Draw Four card when she least expects it). But a drizzle is a drizzle, not a big enough deal to warrant the activities room, and they never have that much time for it, anyway.

Because of the rain, Ivy doesn’t draw today, but she doesn’t think she’d be able to, regardless. All she has the strength to do is wrap her arms around her legs, pull her body in tight, and try not to shiver too tremulously.

This happens sometimes, when the sun isn’t out. This particular time, it’s been somber and gloomy all _week._ It’s definitely beginning to take its toll on Ivy’s energy supply, so much so that when Officer Nolan comes to collect her for her psychology session (Campbell had requested a transfer, thank _God_ ), Ivy can barely walk.

“Come on, Isley, move a little faster,” Nolan commands. Ivy tries, but her vision’s starting to swim, and her head feels as light as air.

When they reach the office, Harley looks concerned. _Way_ more concerned than she probably should be for a _patient’s_ wellbeing. The wellbeing of an _Arkham_ patient, that is.

“Are you feeling all right?” she asks, brows drawn, as Nolan cuffs Ivy’s ankles to the chair.

“I’m fine,” Ivy mutters. “Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Nolan leaves, and Harley asks, quietly, “Did you have night terrors again? Can you draw them for me?”

“No.” Ivy shakes her head, then stops when it makes her feel unsteady. “No, those have actually started to go away, I think. It’s just - “ She fishes around for a flimsy excuse. “ - Sometimes Croc snores. He’s in the cell across from me.”

Harley nods, but she doesn’t look entirely convinced. “Is it loud?”

“He’s a crocodile,” Ivy says sardonically. “You do the math.”

Harley’s cheekbones stain with a slight tinge of pink, and even through her woozy daze, Ivy notices it, and decides that she likes it.

“Well, have you _thought_ about what you’d like to draw today?” Harley asks.

Ivy closes her eyes (the better to evade the question with, my dear). “School, I guess.”

“High school? University?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ivy murmurs listlessly. “Didn’t have friends in either.”

“At university, you had Jason Woodrue,” Harley reminds her gently, and Ivy’s jaw clenches, her stomach churns.

“Not yet,” she says. “Please.”

Harley nods with sympathetic eyes. “Ok.”

She pushes over a sheet of paper and a pencil.

Ivy swallows. She picks up the pencil, and stares down at the page for a few moments, thinking.

School. Hadn’t been fun for her. Hadn’t been easy. The classes were fine, and Ivy’s always been smart, but school is about more than just good grades and college credit. The social stuff…that was what Ivy hadn’t been so good at.

What should she draw? Her first day of freshman year, when she’d had to eat her lunch in a bathroom stall because she’d had no one to sit with? _Her arms feel weak._ The day before she’d met _him,_ when Professor Sanchez had announced that one lucky student might become Woodrue’s protégé, and Ivy’s gut had bubbled with excitement? _Her body aches, deep, to thecore._ The snowy afternoon when she’d been pulled out of a lecture to hear the news that her mother had finally passed away in the hospital? _Her back is cold, clammy, sweaty and uncomfortable._ Or should she draw the scene she’d dreamed of in her sleep, where she’d almost made a friend, and then thrown it all out the window?

_Yeah,_ she thinks. _Yeah, I’ll draw that. The mall, and my librarian outfit, and Kelsey Hawthorne, and Kyra. I’ll draw what could have been._

But when she settles a hand to weigh down the page, every nerve in her system cries out in anguish. She can _feel_ each and every atom of the tree that was slaughtered to create this paper. The chord strikes within her stronger than it it ever has before, and Ivy’s skin feels like it’s on _fire,_ and someone starts shouting, and she can’t even tell if it’s her doing it, and then a sharp, piercing hurt lances right behind her eyes, and her body shudders, and -

The pain suddenly lessens in its intensity, and Ivy slowly and shakily opens her eyes.

She’s lying on her side on the cool, concrete floor, cheek pressed up against it and hair splayed out. The chair she’s still cuffed to is digging into some pretty uncomfortable spots, and Ivy hears someone say, “Get a medic…!”

She comes to again some time later to a blinding light and buckles around her limbs. She’s been strapped down to a cot in the clinic, evidently, and there’s an ultraviolet lamp burning above her, causing multi-colored spots to dance across her vision. Her skin is feverish and beaded with perspiration, yet at the same time, she feels colder than she has in a long while.

“Hey.”

Ivy carefully raises her head and squints her eyes to get a better look at the figure standing at her side.

“How are you feeling?” Harley asks.

Ivy groans and briefly shuts her eyes again. “ _Fantastic._ How long have I been out?”

“About an hour and a half,” Harley says. She looks harried, her lipstick smeared, stray tendrils of hair escaping her bun. “Dr. Gideon says you should be all right, so long as you stay underneath the UV light.”

Ivy nods steadily. “Right. Sorry about that whole… _scene._ ”

Harley shakes her head. “Don’t be.” She hesitates. “Gideon says that you have a severe vitamin D deficiency. I’m sorry for asking, but…do you…photosynthesize?”

“In a sense,” Ivy tells her. “It’s kind of complicated. I basically need two meals - tangible, concrete food for my gut, and sunlight for my body. If I don’t get enough ultraviolet exposure… _this_ happens.”

Harley frowns. “This is all because it was cloudy today?”

“It’s because it’s been cloudy all _week,_ ” Ivy corrects her. “My only chance to get any sun is during rec time, and when there isn’t any sun to be had…well. Now you know.”

“I don’t understand,” Harley says. “Do you not have a window near your cell?”

Ivy shakes her head. “They don’t want to put me near one. They think I can use my abilities to call plants inside.”

“Would you really be strong enough to do that?”

“Considering that all the greenery within seventy-five yards of this place has been eliminated, and also considering that the windows are made out of virtually indestructible Wayne Industries plexiglass…” Ivy rolls her eyes. “I’d have no chance. _They_ don’t seem to understand that, though.”

Ivy sees Harley’s jaw clench, or maybe it’s simply a shift of the light, but either way, Harley presses on.

“So when you touched the paper…?”

Ivy winces. “Every time I touch paper, I can feel the dead trees crying out to me. Usually, it’s…it’s much weaker than that. I can… _mostly_ ignore it, even though I don’t like to. Unfortunately for me, there aren’t really any plant-friendly paper alternatives, and that coupled with the lack of sunlight doesn’t seem to be a very healthy combination for me.”

After a moment, Harley says quietly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Ivy shrugs. “Whatever.”

_God,_ she’s tired. She’d really, _really_ like to sleep.

“Listen, Harls,” she says, failing to stifle a yawn. “Not that this conversation isn’t bringing me to the edge of my seat, but I’m about a minute away from passing the fuck out. So, if you wouldn’t mind…”

Harley stands. “Right. Of course. I’ll leave you to it.” And then her eyes take on a determined look, a look that Ivy’s glimpsed flashes of before, but that she’s never seen so intensely. “I’ve got something I need to do, anyway. Sleep well, Ivy.”

She’s gone before Ivy can return the farewell.

There are two final things that Ivy thinks before she drifts back off again:

  1. Somehow, her fever dream actually managed _not_ to give her any nightmares,



and

2\. She called Harley “Harls” without even realizing she was doing it.

And Harley…Harley hadn’t seemed to mind.

Which means… _something._

Ivy doesn’t dream of anything in particular, but images weave in and out of her brain too quickly to grasp hold of and recognize. Plus, everything feels warm and lazy because of the UV lamp, and it’s -

It’s…actually a really, really nice nap. The best she’s had for a while.

Until it’s interrupted. Again.

Ivy wakes to hands on her wrists and Officer Nolan’s voice.

“Up and at ‘em, Isley,” she orders. “Doc Gideon says you’re good to go.”

Ivy shakes her head to clear her dizziness and gets up. She _does_ feel a lot better now, a lot more steady on her feet and sharp in the mind.

She supposes she should be happy about that, but the truth is that that had been the best sleep she’s had in a long time, and she wouldn’t mind staying a bit longer on Gideon’s cot. Somehow, Ivy can feel that she won’t be so lucky in her own bed.

“Did I miss dinner?” she asks as Nolan walks her out of the clinic.

“Yes,” Nolan says dismissively. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really,” Ivy admits. She thinks eating might be a _bad_ idea, to be honest.

“Good. Then we won’t have to bring anything to you.”

Nolan leads Ivy into the maximum security ward, and down the hall.

“Hey, wait.” Ivy frowns. “Where are we going? My cell’s back there.”

“You’ve been transferred,” Nolan says. “It appears that _somebody_ made an argument for you and your ‘mental state.’”

“What are you - “

“Ivy!” Harley beams at her from where she’s standing in front of an empty cell with Warden Strange. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah,” Ivy says slowly. “What’s - “

“I assume by _Ivy,_ you mean _Ms. Isley,_ Dr. Quinzel?” Strange says. His voice is a thin layer of ice over a heart of venom.

Harley coughs. “Yes, sir. Excuse me.”

Strange sniffs and steps forward to examine Ivy.

“Well,” he says, showing off his teeth as he smiles wide, though it comes off as more of a goonish leer. “Dr. Quinzel has… _persuaded me_ to have you moved from your old cell to this one.” He gestures to the room next to him. “Something about benefitting your health? She has made me aware that there will be no way for you to escape using the flora from outside…And, _Ms. Isley,_ she had better be correct about that.”

It’s only then that Ivy notices the tall skylight windows directly above the cell. There’s no sun coming through them at the moment - in all honesty, they look heavily rained upon - but there _could_ be. There _will_ be.

“Oh,” Ivy says quietly. Something in the space between her chest and her stomach fizzles like a crackling radio.

Harley had done this… _for Ivy._

_Oh._

“We’ll have your things moved in here shortly,” Strange tells her.

Ivy sighs, thinking of her sunflower. That’ll be torched, for sure.

“Thank you,” she mutters, and Harley grins.

“Count yourself lucky that _someone_ here likes you, Isley,” Strange says, and Harley grins again,a little wilder, and it looks like -

No. Couldn’t be.

Ivy’s just so exhausted that her eyes are playing tricks on her.

Nolan walks Ivy into her cell and shuts the door behind her, then leaves with Strange. Harley lags back.

Ivy’s new cell is right across from Calendar Man, and that beats Killer Croc out for neighbors any day.

(She actually doesn’t _mind_ Croc, but she hadn’t been lying - he really does snore.)

Her cell isn’t getting any light now, but once the clouds part, it will. Ivy smiles a private smile about that.

“To your satisfaction?”

Ivy nods. “Yes. I…thank you.”

Harley inclines her head. “I’m a psychologist. I can’t willingly allow one of my patients to stay in a situation that I know is detrimental to their health.”

“Right.”

“Well.” Harley steps back, and smiles. “I hope you en - “

“Why are you treating the Joker?” Ivy blurts before she can stop herself.

Harley frowns. “Where is this coming from?”

Ivy hesitates. “…It’s…he’s crazy. You know that, right?”

Harley shakes her head. “According to your file, so are you. So is everyone else in here.”

“Yeah, but…” Ivy presses her lips together, tight. “Listen, Harley, Joker is…he’s _dangerous._ And yeah, yeah, I know that we all are, but…” She takes a step closer to the glass. “He’s seriously _evil._ People say he’s insane, but I think he’s _too_ sane. He isn’t safe to be around, and I think that you - you should be careful.”

Harley’s eyes have turned cold, her mouth austere. “I don’t need you to tell me how to handle _my_ patient. The Joker is like any of you - _still capable of being saved._ So many doctors have lost their faith in him, but I - “ She straightens her back, sets her shoulders defiantly. “I refuse to give up hope, because I _know_ that there is still hope to be had. Deep down, Mister J is a _good man._ ”

Ivy stares at her. “ _Mister J?_ ”

Harley scowls back. “That’s what he prefers for me to call him.”

Ivy glares. “He’s got you under his thumb. _Right where he wants you -_ “

“ _Shut up!_ ” Harley snaps. Calendar Man glances over across the way. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Isley!”

“I _do,_ ” Ivy growls. “Trust me, I _know_ who _Mister J_ is, I know _exactly_ what I’m talking about - “

Harley suddenly cackles, and this time Ivy knows it isn’t a malfunction of her senses - there’s definitely some Joker in the cutting edges of Harley’s laugh, no question.

“You know _exactly_ what you’re talking about?” Harley’s body convulses with laughter again, her head rearing back, and _fuck, how had Ivy failed to notice how far gone she is?_ “In that case, you won’t really be needing a _psychologist,_ now, will you?”

Ivy grits her teeth together, too angry to take her eyes off of the woman in front of her. “I suppose I won’t be.”

Harley exhales loudly, insanely, all at once and not at all. “In that case: goodbye, _Pamela._ ”

And with a spin of her heel, she’s gone.

Ivy stares blankly at her empty spot.

Calendar Man whistles. “You certainly handled _that_ one well.”

Ivy fumes and retreats into the depths of her new home. But the novelty of it is lost, now that Harley hates her guts.

_You did it again,_ Ivy thinks, staring at the ceiling with her arms crossed over her chest. _You had a friend in your grasp and you chased her away._

Friend. _What a_ stupid _word. You didn’t want to be her_ friend.

_Fuck._ Ivy turns on her side, only to notice her secret potted sunflower, cleverly stashed between the sink’s pipe and the wall.

She swallows, flips over to her other side, closes her eyes, tight.

And she dreams of dimes.

**— — —**

_The house she’d spent her childhood in is different, yet the same. The walls still grow thick with the scores of green ivy that have always been there, except that now, there’s no one to keep them in control, and they slither wildly all across the stones. The once polished windows are grimy with dirt. The grass is dead and brown, the cobbled path is broken and uneven, and the front door is ajar._

_She hadn’t done that. Someone had left it that way. And it isn’t the someone who used to care for the creepers, and wash the windows, and set the sprinklers out, and make sure the path was mended. That someone is dead, has been for almost two years._

_But she? She is_ very _much alive. And so is her target._

_He won’t be for much longer._

_The ivy, the ivy, the ivy, the ivy welcomes her back. Inside her old home it is more of the same - dusty floors, papers strewn about, empty bottles of scotch. She silently follows the trail through the darkened rooms, up the stairs and down the hall, until she finds him, right where he’s always been._

_“Hello, Father,” she says._

_The sallow, disheveled face of Everett Isley smiles up at her drunkenly. “Pamela. I haven’t seen you since the funeral.”_

_“I made sure of that,” she says, keeping the quiver out of her voice. “I didn’t want to see you any more than was appropriate.”_

_He guffaws, drains the last drops of his glass, and slams it down harshly on the desk. As he lifts the bottle to fill it once more with the amber liquid, she notices that his study is even messier than the rest of the house, with books torn off the shelves and pens littering the carpet._

_He’s living like a pig without his wife, and what’s more is he_ knows _it._

_“I hope you’re not here now to ask for money,” he says, not bothering to put the stopper in his bottle as he sets it down again. “Because I’m not going to give you any.”_

_She smiles wanly. “I figured as much. But no. I’m not here for money.”_

_He huffs, sipping from his freshly refilled glass. “Then what the hell_ are _you here for?”_

_She doesn’t answer his question. In fact, she gives no indication of having heard it at all. Instead, she asks him, “With this much money, why are you living like an animal? Is it because you just can’t function without Mom?” Her lips curl into a nasty smile. “I can’t say that I’m surprised, to tell you the truth.”_

_“I can function perfectly fine without that slut,” he growls, and she feels her insides_ burn, _but she forces herself to hold back, for just a little longer. “If anything, I’m better off without her. Good riddance to bad rubbish, that’s what I say.”_

_She hums. “Sure. Whatever makes it easier on your conscience.”_

_He’s never_ had _a conscience, but she doesn’t say that._

_He waves a dismissive and lazy hand. “Care for a drink? You look a little green.”_

_“Why not?”_

_He produces another glass from underneath the desk, pours hers out neat and keeps all the rocks to himself. She’s never cared much for scotch - always been more of a vodka girl, when she drinks at all - but she humors him, the man she used to believe was her father, sits at his desk, and drinks._

_“Why did you come to see me?” he asks._

_She swallows, sets her glass down gently. “I came here so I could kill you.”_

_He laughs. “What for? The money? The company? This house? You never really deserved any of them.”_

_“No.” She shakes her head. “None of those things. I’m going to kill you because I_ want _to.”_

_“Hmph.” He raises his drink in a mocking, derisive toast. “It only took you so long.”_

_She scowls. “You don’t think that I can do it.”_

_He shrugs. “Seeing is believing.”_

_She stands abruptly, knocking her chair to the floor. “You’ll_ see, _” she says._

_She throws her hands out, and_ PULLS.

_The ivy comes quick as a flash, whipping off the walls and bursting through the window, showering the room with glass and letting in a gust of sharp January wind. It hovers, just above him, waiting, waiting for its mistress, waiting for the command to strike._

_He polishes off his drink again. “This is why you were so interested in your damn plants?”_

_“No,” she says forcefully, lacing every syllable with all the hatred and fear and hurt she’s endured her entire life, the hatred that started here, in this house, with the man right in front of her. “It’s what my damn plants_ gave _me to fix what’s wrong.”_

_He raises an eyebrow. “So you came to kill me. When I could just as easily kill you.”_

_She hadn’t seen him reach for the gun, and the shot comes at her without warning. Like lightning, a strand of ivy shoots out and smacks the bullet out of the way._

_She hadn’t willed it to do that, but it had known, anyway._

_“As if I’d let you do that to me,” she growls, commanding a vine to tear the pistol from his hands and throw it out of the shattered window, commanding another to wrap around her father’s throat, his arms, his chest. “When I’ve come this far, and suffered so much.”_

_He sneers. “Do it, then. Take my life.” He stares scornfully at her. “I should have killed these damn vines, like I always said I would. I should’ve sent you off to boarding school, tried for a_ son _with some common_ sense. _” He wheezes, “You were always so_ disappointing, _Pamela.”_

_“That’s not my name,” she snarls, and her plants do the rest of the job._

_She leaves him there, along with her unfinished glass of scotch. She leaves the house, and the unkempt grounds. She leaves the memories, and never goes back to them, apart from in her nightmares._

_The ivy, the ivy, the ivy, the ivy_ roars _with triumph._

**— — —**

For the first time ever, Nygma approaches her in the yard instead of in the mess hall.

She doesn’t have her sketchpad, not like she normally would. She hasn’t _touched_ a piece of paper since…since the last time, and after that, she hadn’t exactly been keen to do it again.

Ivy knows, logically, that if she _did_ try to draw, she wouldn’t feel it as intensely as she had in Harley’s office. But the ghost of the sensation, the remnants of the jolts of pain and the searing hurt, the thought of the innocent trees keep her from trying.

So when he approaches her, she’s doing nothing but staring ruefully at the cement.

“A woman sits all alone in a jungle. Nothing around her is lush or green - in fact, there are no plants at all. The objects surrounding her have life, but you wouldn’t think it at first glance. Where is she?”

“A city,” Ivy mutters, scuffing her toe against the pavement. “A concrete jungle.”

“Trick question,” Riddler says, stationing himself directly in front of her. “The woman is you, and you’re in the yard at Arkham Asylum, the most serious house on this serious Earth.”

Ivy sighs. “What do you want?”

“ _I_ want to know why you stopped going to see Dr. Quinzel,” he says in a sing-songy voice. “And don’t act surprised,” he says, when she throws him a startled glance. “You know I’ve got eyes everywhere.”

Ivy shrugs, doesn’t meet his inquisitive stare. “She figured I didn’t need treatment anymore. That I was good to go.”

She can practically _hear_ the eye-roll in Nygma’s next words. “ _The_ ultimate people-hating introvert, Dr. Pam Isley, is psychiatrically _good to go?_ ” He scoffs. “I don’t believe it for a second. You really need to learn to come up with some better excuses.”

“Whatever,” Ivy grumbles. “I’m not telling you what happened.”

Riddler holds up his hands in a careless gesture. “And _I_ don’t expect you to. But you’re perfectly capable of telling me what happened without _telling me what happened,_ you know.”

Ivy considers brushing him off again. She thinks about telling him to fuck off, or standing up and retreating to a different corner, or screaming loud for the guard to take him away. And she could do any of those things, if she wanted to.

But…Nygma’s just about the only bastard in here who’s ever tried to get along with Ivy, no matter how often she’s pushed him away. And maybe he’s crazy, and maybe _she’s_ crazy, too, and…

Ivy suddenly realizes that the Riddler is probably the closest thing she’s ever had to a friend.

Well, other than Harley, but…

It all sort of comes spilling out of her.

“I asked her about the Joker. Why she’s seeing him. Why she thinks it’s still possible to save him. I - I pushed too hard, and she got mad, and then I said some things that I probably shouldn’t have, and she - she told me she didn’t want to be my psychologist anymore.”

Riddler seems unfazed. “Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you? You don’t like people, and she’s one less person you have to deal with.”

Ivy shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah…right…”

Riddler pauses. “Unless there’s more to it than that. Unless you actually _enjoyed_ Quinzel’s company. Unless…you _miss_ her.”

Ivy says nothing.

“Come on, let me know. Am I right, or am I wrong? Keep in mind that I’m _never_ wrong.”

“You’re right,” Ivy mumbles. “Why do you care, anyway? Is this some sort of effed-up entertainment for you?”

“Do you know why I like telling riddles?” he asks.

Ivy furrows her brows. “No.”

“It’s because they’re _fun,_ ” Riddler says. “I don’t like to be sad, and I don’t like seeing other people sad. Riddles and puzzles and brainteasers are my way of lightening the mood. Switching up the tone.”

Ivy huffs. “Somehow, I don’t think Batman would agree with this self-assessment of yours.”

Nygma waves his hand. “Oh, never mind what the Bat thinks. He isn’t me!” He stops. “But case in point - I don’t want you to be depressed, so I’m doing my best to amend that.”

Ivy blinks. All this time, she figured the Riddler just wanted to get in her pants, or wanted a jailyard ally to watch his back, and nothing more. She never would have expected _this._

_“…Thanks,_ Nygma.”

He straightens his posture and tugs on the collar of his jumpsuit. Ivy can just picture the imaginary lapels he’s probably thinking of.

“Naturally,” he says. “Naturally, Ivy.”

She sighs deeply and buries her head in her arms. “I guess I’ll just never see her again.”

Riddler hums. “ _Or_ …you could try and apologize.”

She snorts. “Like _that’ll_ work.”

“You never know. And besides, _I_ know when her break is. If you time it all correctly…”

Ivy lifts her head. “When? When is she on break?”

He smirks. “What time of day is the same spelled both forwards and backwards?”

Noon is when the inmates are scheduled to eat lunch, but Ivy has different plans. She makes sure to fall in after everyone else in line, so she’s the last to enter the building after rec time is over. As soon as the others are all inside the cafeteria, she throws herself to the floor and conjures up a batch of the fake tears that she hasn’t had to use since the third grade, when Tommy Diaz wouldn’t give her back her favorite green crayon.

“Please,” she sobs, crawling towards the officer on mess hall patrol. “Please, Officer, I need to see Dr. Quinzel. It’s important.”

He frowns and steps away from her warily. “It’s lunch time. You can wait to see the doctor in your next session with her.”

“But she’s _not_ my doctor,” Ivy blubbers. “ _No one_ treats me. I wanted to talk to her about - about her possibly taking me on as one of her patients.”

The officer shoots a glance over at his partner. “Can’t you wait until a free period for this?”

She shakes her head emphatically. “Oh, no, I can’t do that. The next time I’m free is the same time that she has an appointment with another inmate.”

The officer sighs. “Look, I’m sorry about that, but it’s your allotted meal time, now, miss. Why don’t you just head on in there and grab some grub? You might feel better after you eat.”

“You don’t understand,” Ivy gasps. “When I’m upset like this…” She glares. “I get antsy for a _fight._ ”

His eyes widen, and Ivy doesn’t miss the way his hand carefully strays toward his holster.

“You’d better take her, Ned,” the other officer says nervously. “If she starts a cafeteria-wide brawl, it’ll be our asses on the line.”

Ivy’s officer nods, swallowing harshly. “Yeah. Yeah, ok. Come on, miss. I’ll take you to Dr. Quinzel.”

She sniffles convincingly and says, “Really? Oh, _thank you,_ Officer.”

But when they knock, no one comes to answer Harley’s door.

“Sorry, miss,” Ned says. “It seems like the doctor is out.”

Ivy scowls. Either Harley’s avoiding her on purpose (which she’s already been doing), or Riddler’s sources are total shit.

“‘Scuse,” Ned calls to a passing woman whose arms are full of papers. “Do you know where Dr. Quinzel is?”

“Quinzel?” she asks distractedly, clearly in a hurry. “She’s in a session with the Joker.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” Ned says, as the woman dashes past. “Maybe you can come back tomorrow.”

Ivy’s blood hits a boiling point, but she forces her face to turn glum and says, “Oh. That’s too bad.”

Ned hums. “You hungry? There’s still time for you to eat, if you feel like it.”

“Wait.” Ivy fixes him with pleading eyes. “Please, can I just go in there and leave a note on her desk? Then maybe _she_ can set up an appointment with me, for a time that works for her.”

He shifts uncomfortably. “I don’t know, miss…is her door even unlocked?”

Ivy tries the handle. It swings open without any trouble at all.

Ned hesitates. “I suppose…you could do that. Just be quick, yeah? I’ll wait by the door.”

Ivy smiles. “Thank you,” she says, wrenches herself free of his grasp, and walks into Harley’s office.

The space is mostly the same as the last time Ivy was in here - that was only two weeks ago, and not much has changed. The walls are still plain, and the fluorescent light still makes a slight humming sound. The desk is noticeably messier, though, with more hastily-scribbled on sheets of paper and folders and pencil shavings strewn about.

There, underneath a book on sociopaths - the file marked _PAMELA ISLEY._ Ivy picks it up carefully, shooting a wary glance at Ned to make sure he isn’t watching her.

She flips it open. It’s empty, except for her info card - Harley used to write everything down in a leather-bound notebook, but she’s probably got that with her now, in her meeting with the Clown Prince of Being A Fucking Asshole. Ivy stares down at the mugshot of herself, taken the first time she’d been brought into Arkham, just a few years ago. In the photo, her younger self looks tired, a little unhinged, and - irritatingly so - nervous. Apprehensive.

_Scared._

Ivy’s about to close the folder again when she notices something - on her information card _,_ her government name has been inked out, the word _Ivy_ scrawled just above it in red ink. 

She feels a little flutter in a chest at that, to know that Harley cared enough to change her name even in official documentation, but she ignores it and shuts the file. Harley could be coming back any second, and Ivy’s got no time to waste.

She isn’t going to leave a note, but she _is_ going to leave a drawing - she hadn’t planned this from the beginning, but once no one had answered the door, the idea had taken shape in her brain and refused to leave. Ivy is going to make sure that Harley knows that she was here, _and_ that she’s sorry.

She considers, briefly, doodling it on a scrap piece of paper…one of the ones lying on the desk that’s relatively free of Harley’s loopy handwriting…

But she decides she isn’t brave enough to do that yet. That’s ok, though - paper isn’t the only thing that can be drawn on.

Ivy clears off a small patch of desk, grabs a pencil from Harley’s Gotham U mug, and starts in.

The sketch takes her only a minute. It’s a little difficult, because of the cuffs around her wrists, but she manages. When she’s done, she shifts some papers over the desk patch to cover it, and lets Ned escort her back to lunch.

A small part of her simmers anxiously. She isn’t afraid that Harley won’t see the drawing - she’s afraid of what she’ll think of it.

**— — —**

_“Poison Ivy!”_

_Ivy looks up and grins._

_“Batman,” she says. “I wondered when you would be paying me a visit.”_

_He swings down from the shadowy rafters of the abandoned warehouse, his cape swishing moodily about him. The Dark Knight is clothed in whispers, shade, and secrets, the secrets of this city and its blackened underbelly, and Ivy has no intention of letting him in on her own._

_“A problem arises in Gotham - I solve it,” he says, crossing his arms. He seems calm and cool, but Ivy’s smart enough to know that he’s just waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike._

_“‘A problem?’” Ivy raises her eyebrows. “Is that what I am to you? A problem on the same level as the Joker? As Scarecrow? Mr. Freeze?”_

_“What would you call yourself, then?” Batman nods his head towards Ivy’s collection. “A good person wouldn’t kidnap rich businessmen and torture them.”_

_The laugh is ripped from Ivy’s lungs harshly, scornfully, and bare. “_ Trust _me, Batman, I am_ not _a good person. I know that. You don’t have to tell me. But how is this,” She gestures toward the men, the frightened men with their_ sweat _and their_ tears _and their utter_ distaste _for the world they’re living in. “A bad thing to be doing? You know who these men are. What they’ve done.”_

_“Alistair Fillmore. Robert Boer. Benjamin Zhao. All members of Gotham’s wealthy elite,” Batman says, and if Ivy isn’t mistaken, his voice takes on a slightly brittle tone. “All known for contaminating the environment through their business endeavors.”_

_“Exactly.” Ivy raises her head triumphantly. “These are not good people, Batman. I’m just putting them in their place.”_

_Fillmore, Boer, and Zhao all whimper through the vines wrapped around their mouths._

_“But why them, specifically?” Batman asks. “They aren’t the only men in this city guilty of pollution. Why these three? Why not - “ He pauses, for barely a second. “Bruce Wayne?”_

_“Wayne actually takes the time to_ avoid _harming wildlife,” Ivy sneers. “But no one’s truly innocent. I’ll get to him, eventually. I’ll get to_ all _of them, eventually. And not just the ones in Gotham - I’ll go to Metropolis, New York, Central City, Chicago - everywhere. Until people_ learn _not to interfere with what came before them, with what provides them with the chance to_ live.”

_Stoically,_ _Batman shakes his head. “There are better ways to approach this. More civil ways.”_

_“I don’t care,” Ivy says simply. “Tell me, when have those methods ever actually_ worked? _Answer honestly.”_

_Batman is silent._

_Ivy scoffs. “That’s what I thought.” She turns to the men, and clenches her fists. The vines around their bodies begin to constrict._

_Batman’s glove encircles her wrist. “You don’t have to do this. We both want the same thing. This isn’t the way, Poison Ivy.”_

_Ivy pulls herself free and glares at him. “The fact that you can’t understand that this is the only option tells me that we_ don’t _want the same thing, not really.”_

_She raises her hand, and directs a vine straight at him. He ducks out of the way, and throws a punch. She’s too slow to block it, and blood spurts from her nose, but she sends another crawler into his stomach, flings him halfway across the room. He rises almost immediately and pulls out a bat-shaped boomerang, uses it to slice clean through the next plant that comes his way._

_“Fine,” Ivy growls. “We’ll do this the hard way.”_

_And so it goes, their song and dance, punch after punch, kick after kick, grunting and sweat and blood, until Ivy corners him, grabs each of his limbs with a different vine, and starts to PULL, and then -_

_And then she gets shot in the shoulder._

_She’d been so wrapped up in fighting Batman, that she hadn’t noticed Jim Gordon and the rest of the GCPD come in behind her, guns raised._

_  
“Fuck!” she curses, and Batman seizes onto her split-second moment of distraction, untangles himself, and knocks her out, quick._

_She wakes up with a doubled vision, a cloth pressed to her bleeding arm, and silver cuffs around her wrists. She’s in the back of a police truck, two officers with firearms keeping watch on her, and Batman is standing in the doorway._

_“Am I going to Arkham?” she asks, scowling._

_Batman nods. “Yes.”_

_Ivy’s stomach squirms. She huffs. “What about Fillmore and Boer and Zhao?”_

_“They’ve been escorted back home,” Batman says._

_She clenches her jaw so hard she hears her teeth creak. “They deserve what I was going to give them.”_

_Batman shakes his head, and maybe Ivy’s just delirious from the pain, but the gesture seems almost…sympathetic._

_“No,” he says quietly. “But they will pay.”_

_“Sure,” Ivy says bitterly._

_“Dr. Isley.”_

_She stares at him, at the use of her real name. He must have gotten it from the cops._

_“I promise you,” he says. “That those men will not walk free.”_

_Ivy closes her eyes. “I hope you’re right about that.”_

_Batman is silent again. “Me too,” he says, and then. “Goodbye, Poison Ivy.”_

_She says nothing in return._

**— — —**

Harley never comes to visit Ivy in her cell. Nor does she request a meeting between the two of them.

Ivy figures, bitterly, that it’s a lost cause. And then she wonders why she even bothered to try and repair this mess of a relationship in the first place.

_Because I had to. Because I hate not seeing her, not being able to talk to her. Because when she was around, life was a little less awful here._

Too late.

She never tells Nygma about her failed attempt, but he seems to get the message anyway, and doesn’t pry. And she appreciates that. She even thinks she might hate his riddles a little less now, too.

Friendship is unfamiliar territory to Ivy - so it’s…it’s a start.

But the one person she wants is someone who won’t speak to her. And Ivy’s afraid she’ll never be able to fix what she broke.

Maybe…Maybe it’s for the best, though…Ivy should never have gotten so close to a shrink. She’d been setting herself up for heartbreak from the beginning. No good can come from pretty women in glasses who ask you about your childhood.

Despite these indisputable, hard _facts,_ she feels like she misses Harley even _more._

Without Harley, life in Arkham starts to shift back to a sense of… _normalcy_ (as normal as things can be when you’re an inmate at a mental asylum). And then -

And then.

Ivy’s night terrors have only been getting worse since she stopped seeing Harley. Voicing her trauma really _had_ helped her with a lot…but it’s not like she’s going to talk to anyone else in here about it. Not Riddler, _not_ Nolan, and sure as _hell_ not Calendar Man.

It’s a random night of a random week. Today had been sunny - Ivy had soaked up the vitamin D and felt guiltier and angrier than she has in a while. Right now, though, she’s lying on her side in bed, back to the cell door with a pillow pressed against her ear to try and block out the sounds of Crane’s incessant muttering filtering in from next door through the crack in the wall.

She’s fully expecting to drift off into yet another night full of Fathers and Batmen and Dr. Woodrues, when something far away goes _boom._

From down the hall, Ivy hears Man-Bat click softly. Crane’s murmurs falter for just a moment, hesitating to listen, before starting back up again.

Probably just a night-guard slamming the main door a little too loudly. It’s almost as if they have _no respect_ for the inmates - Ivy switches up her sleeping position slightly and shuts her eyes again.

_Boom._

She sits up immediately, wide awake. This sound was much louder than the first, and closer, too. The atmosphere in the cellblock has shifted palpably - Ivy can sense that the other inmates are on the alert, as well.

They all wait with bated breath, and the silence stretches for what feels like an eternity. Ivy’s just considering going up to her glass wall to see if she can clap eyes on anything, or ask somebody what the fuck is going on -

_BOOM._ The heavy doors to the room burst open, and Ivy watches as the guards on duty are gunned down with a sharp burst of bullets. She can’t make out the ones responsible in the dark, but there are a lot of them, and they seem to be wearing masks.

The other inmates hoot and holler. Croc lets out an audible roar of approval.

“We’re here to liberate you all,” a woman’s hard voice announces. “Set you free from the cages Gotham has put you in and get you back out on the streets where you belong. Teach the citizens of this hellhole what Gotham’s _really_ like.”

Across the way, Calendar Man bangs excitedly on the glass. He isn’t the only one - the tattoo takes up across the entire cellblock, until Ivy can barely hear herself think over the sound.

Who the hell _are_ these people? No one wants anarchy for anarchy’s sake, not unless they’re the Joker…though this crew could possibly consist of some of his goons…

Ivy can hear cells being opened and prisoners cheering. She hears Man-Bat’s screech, and the mechanical whines of Mr. Freeze’s suit, and Scarecrow’s crazed laugh as his cell’s doors slide apart.

Two of the goons appear in front of Ivy’s cell - they’re in ski masks, not clown get-up, so they must not be Joker’s guys after all, but they’re definitely working for somebody.

_The question is, who?_

“We brought you a present, Dr. Isley,” one of them says. Her doors open, and they throw a burlap sack at her feet.

“Will this be enough?” the other asks.

Ivy steps forward. She smells the loamy scent, watches the few stray clods skitter across the moonlit floor. It smells like freedom because it _is_ freedom, and it’s just what Ivy needs.

“It’s perfect,” Ivy says, and then she PULLS.

The bag of soil splits open, and then there is green, green, green. Ivy wills the plants to shuck her prison jumpsuit and get her back into something a little more comfortable, a little more leafy, and a little more _Ivy._

She hasn’t felt this rejuvenated in _months._

“Who do you work for?” she demands.

“Boss is somewhere around here,” one of them tells her. “Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

And Ivy understands. “Harvey Dent.”

“He prefers to go by Two-Face.”

She uses the vines she hasn’t had in months to take her out of the cellblock, and towards her goal.

Ivy finds him on the third floor, along with Ned, the officer who’d escorted her to Harley’s office. Ned is shaking uncontrollably, tears streaming down his cheeks. His partner lies face down on the floor next to him - his head is surrounded by a pool of blood flecked with grey bits of brain matter.

Ivy slinks back into the shadows, and watches. She can only see Dent’s good side from here - the scars are hidden by a cover of darkness.

“Please,” Ned begs, nose red and streaming. “Please, Mr. Dent, I got a family.”

“Begging won’t get you anywhere,” Dent says, and this is the harsh voice Ivy recognizes from the television, not the approachable and businesslike one from his campaign ads. “I’m only going to kill you if chance tells me I should. Your partner met a bad fate - let’s see if you’ll be just as unfortunate.” He holds up a silver coin, shining in the pale light of the full moon. “Good side, you live to see another day.” He turns it over, revealing a blackened and scratched surface. “Bad side…you die.”

Ned chokes off a sob and closes his eyes, pressing his hands together, lips moving soundlessly in a silent prayer to a God who won’t answer.

With a flick of his thumb, Two-Face flips the coin.

Ivy holds her breath.

Dent looks down. “Hmm. It seems that it’s just not your lucky day.”

Ned whimpers. “ _No -_ “

The bullet passes clean through his skull and knocks him to the floor.

Ivy swallows and steps out. “Two-Face.”

He turns to her, and his scars catch in a beam of moonlight - it’s so much worse in person, so much more real than what had been shown on TV. His left eye is bloodshot and popping, his hair stark white, his lips nonexistent, showing nothing but bone. In contrast with his still handsome right side, it’s horrific.

Ivy doesn’t take her eyes off him. She’s stronger than that.

“Poison Ivy.” Dent smirks. On Two-Face, it’s more of a leer. “Making good use of the soil, I see.”

“Why?” she asks him simply. “Why are you doing this?”

He scoffs. “ _Why._ Good question. Why is Gotham the most crime-ridden city in the world, despite the best efforts of the law, the people, the Batman, whoever, to stop that? Why do its citizens believe that it can be changed easily, with the drop of a hat?” He maneuvers his coin between his knuckles, methodically, back and forth, back and forth, speaking more to it than to her. “ _Why_ can’t they understand that to fix a problem, you have to approach it the _hard_ way?”

“So it’s revenge,” Ivy says. “But Salvatore Maroni is already dead.”

“True,” he acknowledges. “But Penguin, and Scarecrow, and Joker, and _you_ are all very much alive. And that’s not to mention all the gang warfare, the arsonists, the burglars, the rapists, the murderers, the pedophiles, the God-knows-what - they’re everywhere. They’re a _cancer,_ and I’m going to _carve them out._ ”

He says that now, like he won’t become one of those same petty criminals himself. Like he hasn’t already.

Ivy opts not to bring up that particular point. “Your goal is to release us, just to put us back in here.”

Dent shrugs. “Only to teach them all a lesson.” He pauses. “You know, I am still District Attorney.”

“Yeah. I wonder how long that will last,” Ivy deadpans.

Two-Face scowls. “It doesn’t matter. The law doesn’t rule me anymore; chance does. Fate. Fortune, and misfortune, and everything in between. Because you can always trust chance. It’s fair. Unbiased. _Clean._ ”

Ivy stays silent for a moment. “Are you going to use _fate_ to decide whether to kill me or not?”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly. “No. I just set you free. Why would I do that?”

  
  
“I’m going to go now,” Ivy declares.

Neither Dent nor Two-Face says a word. They just keep their eyes shut, almost as if they’re dreaming.

Ivy leaves. She won’t have long before the police get a handle on the building, and she definitely doesn’t want to be here when that happens. She can run home. Lay low. See Frank and the rest of her plants again.

She’s going to do just that. She steps onto a windowsill, looks out at the city laid out in front of her. The lights. The lack of trees. The smog-filled air. She’s going to fix all of that, once she escapes.

But she can’t shake the feeling that she’s…missing something. Looking some detail over.

A piercing scream rents clean through the air, and even though it’s a floor away and cut off quickly, Ivy recognizes the voice immediately.

“ _Fuck,_ ” she whispers, and turns back without a second thought.

Ivy doesn’t know why Harley’s here now. Harley _never_ works late because she doesn’t like the Asylum at night, she’d told Ivy so - but maybe something had convinced her to stay a little longer than usual tonight. Ivy’s chest burns with acid at the thought of what could have kept Harls here after hours.

Or rather, _who_ could have kept her here.

As Ivy nears closer to Harley’s location, she hears another scream, followed by a menacing roar.

“Jesus, Croc,” Ivy mutters. “Just fuck off back to the sewers already.”

She finally spots them in the second floor corridor. The hall is swarmed with the corpses of Arkham’s finest, blood spattered across the linoleum, whole chunks torn out of some of the bodies - a throat here, a liver there, gore and guts strewn carelessly about.

Killer Croc’s facing away from her, and he’s got Harley backed up against the wall, trembling hands shielding her face. Neither of them can see Ivy - and that’s just how she likes it.

“YOU’RE CHUM!” Croc thunders, and he goes in for the kill.

Ivy wraps her vines around him in less than a second. “That’s _enough,_ Waylon!” She hurls him across the floor.

“What’s the big idea, Isley?!” he bellows, picking himself up, but Ivy only blocks his path with more plants. “That’s a good, fresh meal!”

“And you’ve already eaten plenty tonight!” Ivy shouts. “Now _LEAVE,_ or next time, it’ll be through the window!”

Croc responds with another booming roar. He galumphs down the hall in the other direction, presumably to find someone else to sate his hunger with.

“Are you ok?” Ivy asks, pulling a still-trembling Harley to her feet.

Harley stumbles and falls. Ivy catches her.

“I’m fine,” she mutters, staring up at Ivy, her face _so_ close, her eyes, her lips. “You…saved me.”

Ivy’s throat feels like sandpaper. “What was I supposed to do, let you become reptile fodder?”

Harley exhales, eyelids fluttering. Her hands on Ivy’s arms burn where they’re touching her skin. “Thank you.”

“Right.” Ivy swallows, steadies Harley, and steps away before she tries anything she’ll regret. “Well. Good night, Dr. Quinzel.”

“I saw your drawing,” Harley says loudly.

Ivy turns slowly back around.

“I saw your drawing,” Harley repeats, softer. “The one that you left on the wood of my desk. The one of...of me.”

Ivy says nothing. Her mandibles feel glued shut.

“I’m sorry,” Harley murmurs. “I’m sorry for dropping you as a patient. I know you…I know that our sessions were good for you.”

Ivy unsticks her jaw. “Yeah. They were. They…they were…helpful.”

Helpful? _What the fuck is wrong with you?_

Harley nods. “You don’t have to call me Dr. Quinzel, you know.”

Ivy’s stomach jitters. “I know. Harley.”

“Ivy,” Harley says back. “ _Ivy._ Where are you going to go?”

She shrugs. “Home. Someplace.” She looks around at her surroundings with distaste. “Anywhere else.”

“Good luck,” Harley says quietly.

“Yeah,” Ivy says, turning to the window again, a sinking feeling occupying her gut. “Same to you, Harls.”

She places her hands on either side of the window-frame, and she -

She can’t _leave_ like this. Not when - _Not when -_

“Look, I,” Ivy starts, facing Harley again, but suddenly Harley is right in front of her, and suddenly Harley is _kissing_ her, kissing her hard and desperate like it’s the end of the world - and to be fair, it sort of is.

Ivy’s sternum implodes. She kisses back - _God,_ she kisses back, and she hasn’t kissed anyone in so long, never like this, never like _this,_ in this way, so heavy and warm and _wanting._ She wants and _wants,_ and she gets, she _gets_ exactly what she wants.

“ _Why?_ ” Ivy asks the question for the second time that night, pressed up against Harley’s red-hot mouth.

“ _Because,_ ” Harley gasps back, and Ivy figures that’s a good enough answer for her, and her fingers fist deeper through Harley’s blonde, blonde hair.

They have to stop, eventually. Because even if it _feels_ like time is standing still, it really isn’t. Someone will find them - the cops, or Two-Face, or _Joker -_ and then they’ll be fucked.

“Come with me,” Ivy says. She doesn’t have to think twice about it - she just knows she needs to try and ask.

“I can’t,” Harley whispers, her lipstick stained around the arches of her lips like wine on linen. “You know that I can’t go with you.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Ivy pleads. “You don’t belong to him. You’re your own person.”

Harley shakes her head, hopelessly. “I don’t even _know_ who I am anymore.”

“I can help you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ivy’s caved-in sternum reforms itself, then splinters through with cracks. “Ok,” she says quietly. “Ok.”

Harley grabs her hand and squeezes it. “Goodbye, Ivy.”

Ivy swallows around the lump which has formed in her throat. “Bye, Harls.”

She pulls herself onto the window-ledge, and glances back.

“Someday,” she says. “I’ll tell you all about Dr. Woodrue.”

“Sure,” Harley says.

“I mean it,” Ivy says seriously. “I really mean it.”

“I believe you.”

Ivy leaves Harleen Quinzel -a doctor, a psychologist, a friend, a kiss, a _something_ \- behind in the ruins of a cinderblock Hell.

The next time Poison Ivy runs into her former doctor, Harley Quinn’s skin is bleached chemical-white, a smile on her face.

**— — —**

_“Pamela.”_

_She shakes her head. “That’s not my name.”_

_He gets sloppily to his feet, knocking over his half-empty coffee mug, which spills its contents all over the papers on his desk. His workspace is much less tidy than she remembers - she’s only been gone three weeks, and the change is all too obvious._

_“You’re alive.” Surprise and shock flickers in his dime-eyes, his dime-eyes housed in his hollow face. The fluorescents make him look sickly, pale, and gaunt - but maybe that’s just what he looks like now. All dark circles and uncombed hair and five ‘o-clock shadow._

_“I was never dead,” she tells him, keeping a calm composure. “You and the doctors only thought so - what excuse did you give them, exhaustion?”_

_“I - I told them that the stress of over-working yourself had caused you to crack under the pressure, that you took too many pills and collapsed…” He looks at her in wonder. “_ How _did you survive?”_

_“Turns out the serum wasn’t a bust, after all,” she says delicately, inspecting her nails. “It works, Dr. Woodrue.”_

_For a moment, he stands stock still. Then, his face splits into a huge, excited, undeserved grin. “Oh my God.” He laughs. “Oh my_ God, _this is great, Pamela!”_

_He tries to touch her. She backs away._

_He frowns. “Your skin…”_

_“A side-effect,” she says. “From all the chlorophyll.”_

_“Of course,” he mutters. “Of course, I could have predicted that - but it works! You’re not dead! It saved you!”_

_“It wouldn’t have had to, if you hadn’t administered it to me against my will,” she says, hardening her voice. “I didn’t_ ask _to be the test patient, Doctor.”_

_He shakes his head. “Why are you upset with me? The serum works. Pamela, I’ve provided you with the medical breakthrough of a_ lifetime. _”_

_“It wasn’t just you!” she shouts. “This is_ my _project, too,_ I _did half the work, I_ deserve _half the credit!”_

_He blinks, looking taken-aback, and then smiles. “Sure. Whatever you want. Now.” He picks up a clipboard and clicks his pen. “Tell me everything about your experience with the serum so far. Do you feel that you need more to function properly? Have you tried hurting yourself, to see how quickly it heals you? Have there been any negative side effects that you’ve experienced since taking it?”_

_She stares at him. “You’ve got to be fucking with me.”_

_“Pardon?”_

_“You’ve got to be FUCKING with me!” she screams, and sweeps her arm across his desk, throwing everything, the coffee-soaked papers, the laptop, and all his corny tchotchkes overboard and onto the floor._

_“Whoa!” He steps back and holds up his hands. “Pamela, calm yourself.”_

_“NO!” she screeches. “I’m done being calm! I’m done letting people walk all over me! I’m fucking done with YOU!”_

_“You mean you’re leaving?” he asks._

_“Yes,” she says, breathing heavily. “Yes, I’m fucking_ leaving.”

_He chuckles lowly, mockingly shaking his head. “Oh, Pamela. You won’t leave me.”_

_“I_ will.”

_“If you do that, I’ll just test the serum on somebody else,” he says flippantly. “And when I accept the Nobel Prize for my outstanding work, I won’t mention your name_ once.”

_“I don’t care,” she hisses. “I don’t need you. And you don’t even_ know _my name.”_

_He only smiles. “Pamela Isley, you are a selfish, cold-hearted_ bitch.”

_She feels her fingers twitch, and every one of her molecules ignite with savage flame. “My name,” she says, voice trembling with anger and hatred. “Is Poison Ivy.”_

_He scoffs. “Oh, is_ that _what you’re calling yourself now? Doesn’t matter. You’ll always be little_ _Pammy_ _to me.”_

_“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” she shrieks, and the windows smash as all the bushes and vines and grass shoots from outside in the faculty courtyard make their entrance._

_Finally, the mask slips off. He looks utterly non-plussed. “What…What’s going on? What is this?”_

_“You might want to start taking notes,” she says. “First unprecedented side effect: I can do_ this.”

_She clenches her fists, and the plants tie him down to the desk, quick as a whip._

_He struggles against his bonds, squirming on his back like a pathetic beetle. “Let me go. You can’t - let me go!”_

_“Oh,” she says. “I can.”_

_He thrashes wildly. “Let go of me! Help! Help! He - “_

_She wraps a thorn around his mouth, and delights in the way he whimpers with pain as it slices open his lips, his chin, the tip of his nose._

_“No one’s coming to save you,” she tells him, standing over him. Her hair is red, her skin is green, her soul is ablaze. “No one’s coming, Jason Woodrue. Because you don’t_ deserve _to be saved.”_

_He moans._

_“All I want to say to you…All I want to say…I don’t have the time.” She tosses her hair back over her shoulder. “But no matter. Just know that you,_ Doctor, _” She spits the word. “Are the worst thing to ever happen to me.” She laughs lightly. “And that really is saying a lot.”_

_He closes his eyes and shakes his head. Tears run down his face in panicked rivulets._

_No amount of tears is going to change all the things he’s done to her._

_“Goodbye, Jason,” she says, and before he can scream another muffled scream, the ivy, the ivy, the ivy, the ivy is tearing his abdomen open._

_She pulls in her vines, and her vines pull_ out. _And finally,_ finally _the light in those shining dime-eyes dissipates for good._

_When it’s over, she leaves him there, out on display. He’s sure to be found fast - she can already hear the frantic footsteps hurrying in the direction of the office._

_She casts one last disdainful look at his degraded corpse, and leaves campus._

_Dr. Jason Woodrue dies. Dr. Pamela Isley dies, too._

_Poison Ivy reigns over them both, free at last._

**Author's Note:**

> will i ever write harlivy with a happy ending? 
> 
> anyway, i hope y'all enjoyed reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it, and i /really/ enjoyed writing it :)) this definitely takes a lot of inspiration from the harleen comics run by stjepan šejić - i would totally recommend that to anyone who loves harley quinn!
> 
> follow me on [tumblr](https://connorswhisk.tumblr.com) if you want to see me scream about pam isley/harlivy/gotham rogues in general


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